SOVIET INSTITUTIONS

Dear Comrade!

Once and for all, it is necessary to put an end to the disgrace of red tape and bureaucratic procedure in your institution. Important and urgent matters, directed to you through the Reception of the Council of People's Commissars with a view to resolving numerous complaints and petitions addressed to the Council of People's Commissars and its Chairman, are repeatedly left without response and without execution.

I propose that you tighten up immediately. The machinery of Soviet administration must work accurately, clearly, swiftly. From its slovenliness, not only do the interests of private individuals suffer, but the entire business of administration takes on a character that is spurious and phantom-like.

Taking as the true measure of the productivity of labor of any given institution, first and foremost,

the degree of actual and immediate execution of all matters passing through it, I demand henceforth the speediest and most exhaustive responses to the matters and inquiries directed to you. To confine oneself to empty formal replies and the passing of matters to other institutions means likewise breeding red tape and wasting paper.

I warn you that, in the event of a continuation of such conduct, the Reception of the Council of People's Commissars is empowered to bring the guilty parties to account, regardless of "rank."

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

Written in December 1921

First published in 1942

in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV

Printed according to the typewritten text signed by V. I. Lenin